Tag Archives: facts of life

“You take the good, you take the bad you take them both and there you have…” That takes me straight to Tootie, Blair, Jo and the Facts of Life gang and noon sandwiches at home after swimming lessons.

“Here we are face to face a couple of silver spoons.” That one makes me wish desperately for a rideable indoor train, if only my apartment was big enough.

“I bet we’ve been together for a million years. And I bet we’ll be together for a million more.” That was the motherload, Thursday’s Must See TV that welcomed the slow but oh-so-stylish Mallory and the charming and forever young Alex P. Keaton.

In the last month, I even managed to get the theme songs for Disney’s Adventure of the Gummi Bears and Dear John stuck in my head and dutifully song bombed them forward.

Because they are memorable. Because they wisp you back to a very specific time, when TV schedules mattered and brought people together. Maybe it’s because I just watched more TV back then?

All I know is that, these days, theme songs have all but been washed away. Blink and you’ll miss them. Modern Family’s lasts all of 10 seconds and 30 Rock’s a mere 18. A quick review of the 15 top rated TV shows last week showed, first off, that only six were original comedies or dramas (the rest were reality TV, the NCAA Championship Game and 60 Minutes). Of those six, only one could be categorized as good and that one is “Who are You?” written and performed by The Who for CSI. The rest all sound like a version of the same sort of Muzak.

So…what happened? Is it a theme song revolt against our multitasking lives, impatient viewing habits and too-quick-to-fast-forward fingers? Are the writers saying: “Enough is enough. If you won’t respect us, then we won’t respect you!”

I bet that’s part of it. And I even bet that shorter theme songs are part of the revolt. The shorter they are, the harder they become to zip through in order to get right to the storyline.

I zip through them myself, but I do think it’s a shame that we’ll never find ourselves, late at night, having group sing-a-longs to any theme song post 1995. And maybe that’s being generous?